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A few months ago, the New York Times ran this photo of U.S. Navy SEALs as they prepare for a night mission to capture Iraqi insurgent leaders near Fallujah, Iraq. My guess is there were a lot of newspapers dampened with drool that morning. I know mine was. In a matter of hours, the photo had hit Twitter, courtesy of a few romance writers who no doubt stared at that shot and invented that hero’s goal, motivation, conflict, heroine, backstory, and probably an entire new SEAL series. Can’t you just see him on a cover? As a matter of fact, someone did!

The original tweeters, Christie Ridgway and Alison Kent, started chatting about how inspired they were by the photo. That man is the essence of a hero — fearless, loyal, honorable, and willing to die for what he knows is right. The tat, scar, and physique spell sexy, but it’s where he is and what he’s about to do that takes my breath away. That online admiration led to the SEAL of My Dreams anthology for charity.

Within days, Christie and Alison had arranged to obtain the rights for the picture and contacted a group of authors known for their love of a good military hero, asking if we would write short stories with a Navy SEAL hero and donate the proceeds to a military charity.

I was honored and humbled to participate in this remarkable project, one of nineteen authors who contributed eighteen short stories and one tear-jerking forward by Robyn Carr. When I first heard the ambitious schedule and the quality and quantity of the authors (oh, the deadlines!) I admit I was skeptical that this concept could fly. Lesson to me: never doubt the power of a Navy SEAL.

And very special thanks to awesome Bell Bridge Books for publishing the paperback and ebook versions of SEAL of my Dreams, with all proceeds pledged to the Veterans Research Corporation, a non-profit foundation supporting veterans’ medical research.

Many of these authors don’t just write about military heroes, we also have a few special ones in our hearts and lives. My nephew, an Army Ranger I’ve mentioned here a few times, spent fifteen months in Baghdad and while he returned home to us healthy and whole, his health care costs and issues can be daunting. I was thrilled to give my time and talent for a program that I know will help thousands of heroes just like my nephew.

My story, “Whirlwind,” is set on the shores of Barefoot Bay, giving readers their first snapshot of the island location that will be front and center in my upcoming contemporary romance series. I’ve read through the whole anthology and I can assure you this collection is power-packed with romance, passion, danger, action, emotion, and eighteen breathtaking Navy SEALs.

I hope all of the Murder She Writes community members will support the Veterans Research Corporation and pick up a copy of an anthology that celebrates the men of the Navy SEALS and the women who love them.

To help that effort, I’m giving a $25 gift card to the online book retailer of your choice to one commenter. Just tell us who is your favorite fictional Navy SEAL hero! (Or real life hero, if you prefer!) The only stipulation…the winner has to promise to spend $9.99 on SEAL of My Dreams. The rest is just for fun reading and, trust me, if you read this antho, you are going to have some new favorite authors! Please support the project and this wonderful organization that helps our heroes after they come home to us.

Here are this week’s prize winners on Murder She Writes. Thanks for stopping by, everyone. We wish you all a safe week ahead, especially if you live in the path of Hurricane Irene.

The winner of a signed copy of Lori Armstrong’s NO MERCY is Crystal H. Please email info@loriarmstrong.com with your info and she will send your prize.

The winner of Deb’s prize, an online gift card, is Jan Snyder. Please email DebraEWebb@aol.com and she will get you the details to claim your prize.

The winner of the signed copy of BLOOD MAGIC and SOUL MAGIC by Jennifer Lyon is LISA B! Congrats Lisa! Please email Jen at Jenapodaca@aol.com with your mailing address and she’ll get the books out to you soon.

The winner of Laura Griffin’s new book SNAPPED, plus a $15 giftcard to Starbucks, is Laura Kay. Please contact laura@lauragriffin.com with a mailing address, and she will send your prize.

On Monday my kids start school. I’ve already had two orientations (on Tuesday for my second grader and on Wednesday for my third and fifth graders.) On Friday it’s the high school orientation, with a special meeting with just the seniors. Yes, I have a senior. I don’t feel old enough to have a daughter who will be 18 in a few months. :/

I’m VERY excited about the start of school because I get my regular schedule back. Having the kids around is one thing, but summer is also full of playtime, sports practice, summer day camp, shopping, and (of course) boredom. They want mommy time, but mommy has deadlines! So balancing it all is a chore because no two days are the same. Worse, because it’s summer, the kids stay up later so I can’t get back to the computer until later. When school starts I know that I have my 9-3 writing time and my 9 pm – midnight writing time. While I am not an organized person in most of my life, I need a set writing schedule. When I see something on my calendar for, say, 1:30 in the afternoon, it’s much harder to focus because I know I have this obligation. During the school year, I rarely schedule anything during my writing time.

The other night we had a scare–my boys came back from football practice and my youngest ran around the side of the house to tell me he was home, and came across a rattlesnake. Dan decapitated it and it continued to slither around, which is downright creepy.

I know there are snake lovers out there, but I’m not one of them. I can handle small snakes (King snakes, garter snakes) if they don’t surprise me, but rattlers terrify me. And terrified my son. He turned and ran and was crying so hard he couldn’t talk–it took several minutes for my husband to get out of him that he saw a rattle snake that hissed at him. When Dan found the snake, it was coiled. Snakes don’t generally attack unless they’re cornered, and this one was definitely cornered.

Here’s the video my daughter took of the snake 30 minutes after it’s demise:

We didn’t take a vacation this year. Next year, because RWA is in Anaheim, I’m planning on taking the family to Disneyland before the conference. Then maybe they can stop by the literacy signing so they can see what mom does when she leaves for a couple weeks every summer. 🙂

I also have two exciting projects. I’m dipping my toe into digital self-publishing. This won’t replace my traditionally published books–but hopefully help me find new readers and also give my current fans some fun, inexpensive stories to read!

The first is an amazing paranormal/urban fantasy anthology called ENTANGLED. All the proceeds are benefiting the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. The stories have been donated, as well as the cover art, the formatting, and the press. I wrote a Seven Deadly Sins novella, which will hopefully tide my paranormal fans over until I know what’s going on with the third book in the series, Mortal Sin. It’s a meaty story, nearly 30,000 words. And the cover is absolutely gorgeous. ENTANGLED will be available wherever digital books are sold on September 12.

Demon hunters Moira O’Donnell and Rafe Cooper are dragged into the dangerous world of nocturnal predators to find “Ghostly Justice” for a virgin sacrificed to an ancient blood demon in Allison Brennan’s all-new Seven Deadly Sins novella.

The other project is four short stories in a single-author anthology. Two of the stories were previously published in anthologies, but many of my fans haven’t read them. And two are completely new and original, including a novella I’d originally “almost” sold to Arabella Magazine as a serialized story before the mag went under. I just got the cover that I hired Hot Damn Designs to design and am SO thrilled with it. I don’t know when it’ll be out–but I hope later this fall.

Now, I’m in the middle of writing SILENCED (Lucy Kincaid #4.) I put it aside this week to read the page proofs of IF I SHOULD DIE (Lucy Kincaid #3) and can’t wait to get back to it. I’ll admit, it’s a little scary having a new publisher and a new editor after 17 books with the same people. Scary and exciting and nerve-wracking!

This year is full of beginnings and endings. And now that the end of summer is here, I’m eager to dive into all my projects with 110%.

I’ve been reading some YA mysteries. I read ALL UNQUIET THINGS by Anna Jabaz coming back from Thrillerfest, and now I’m in the middle of THE CHRISTOPHER KILLERS by Alane Ferguson. You can draw your own conclusions 🙂

What are you reading right now? Let me know and I’ll several people will be getting some free books! That’s right, my daughter Kelly and I are purging our bookshelves. We’re putting together 3-4 boxes of books–whatever can fit into the flat rate postal box. A mix of YA, thrillers, mysteries and romance. If you win, you can read the books or pass them onto a friend! I’d much rather give my books to the loyal readers of MSW than strangers in the library 🙂 And every box will also have one of my backlist titles as I go through my shelves and re-organize.

And finally, for those of you who have been frustrated by our Murder She Writes site going up and down for no apparent reason … our wonderful hosting company is moving our site to a new server this weekend, so we hope that the problems will be over next week.

My family, on occasion, can be a wee bit geeky. I’ll be the first to admit it. We tote books everywhere we go. We’ve been known to get up from the dinner table to look up a word. Some of us wear tube socks, and have the tan lines to prove it.

But perhaps the most shining example of our geekiness is that whenever we have family reunions, we become vicious gamers.

No, I’m not talking cool games, such as Angry Birds or Mario Kart or Zombie Gunship. No, we play table games: Scrabble, mahjong, Risk, Monopoly, Yatzee. We get very serious about it, sometimes to the point of people not speaking to one another for a few hours–which doesn’t always go over well with the cook when it’s time to sit down for Thanksgiving dinner. But that’s just the way we are. Super geeky, super competitive, and super serious game-players.

I thought we’d about reached our maximum of un-hipness when we spent most of our last summer vacation together playing Scrabble (which, in case you don’t know, has some fun variations not to be played sober or while there are grandparents around). But then my sister blew that illusion when she called me last December to tell me what she wanted for Christmas. I had drawn her name out of the hat, so it was my turn to get her a gift in our family gift exchange.

“The Settlers of Catan with the seafaring expansion pack.”

“The who?”

“Settlers of Catan. The Seafaring Edition. It’s at the top of my Christmas list.”

So being the cool sister that I am, I hopped online and ordered it for her. Good thing I did, too, because it was in such high demand that many places had it backordered. Anyway, the thing arrived on my doorstep. I took one look at it and decided it wasn’t for me. You know, the package was very medieval-looking and the cards talked about plagues and villages and I knew right away this was one game I would NOT be wasting my Christmas holiday playing.

Wrong.

We played for hours. And hours. We actually became sad when the visit wrapped up and we had to put the game away because it marked the end of our too-short family reunion. Back to the real world.

Which brings me to the real reason we’re such game nuts in our family. It’s because we like each other, and it’s a fun way to spend time together and catch up. Games give us a chance to sit around a table and drink and eat and laugh with people we don’t see very often. And when reality isn’t fun to talk about for whatever reason, we can still be together and focus on the game.

Our next family reunion is this weekend, and I’m so excited. My sister and her family are coming in from overseas, and my parents and other relatives are gathering at my house for a few days. I can’t wait to see everyone. I’ve got my bar stocked, my chocolate-chip cookies baked, and my games all dusted off and ready to go. As we approach our fourteenth day of 100-plus temperatures in Austin, I’m looking forward spending some time indoors instead of roasting in the heat.

Does your family play games? What are they?

Anyone who leaves a comment is entered to win a signed copy of my latest book, UNFORGIVABLE.

And just in case you doubted what I said about geekiness, I’m playing a game today here on the blog. Whoever wins will get a $15 gift card to Starbucks:

Look at the Scrabble board below and tell me the point value of the word “murder” in Murder She Writes. First person to get it right wins the gift card, anyone who comments at all gets a chance to win the book.

Thailand was no exception. I set out to visit this country on the way home to the States after living and working in Southeast Asia. My older sister also happened to be living in the region, and she decided to come. Then my younger sister joined in and it became a family reunion. Three sisters, two husbands, and a meticulously planned itinerary that would take us to one of the most beautiful

In Bangkok, Thailand, on a quest for a new passport.

islands in the world, Koh Phi Phi. (This is the scenic setting for the movie THE BEACH, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, BTW).

There is much to love about Thailand–friendly people, delicious food, and some of the prettiest coral reefs in the world. Unfortunately, we booked our trip during the rainy season and, guess what? It rained! And rained! And rained! After taking two planes and a ferry boat to get to this gorgeous island, we ended up trapped in the hotel staring out at the downpour. Finally, we ran out of vacation days and boarded the ferry, still very soggy, back to the mainland.

Which, of course, was when the sun came out.

We decided to make the best of it and went up on the top deck to soak up the sunshine. Then we took a taxi to our hotel and prepared to make our flight home. I knew something was wrong when I climbed out of the taxi and my sister gasped. While we were blissfully sunning ourselves on the ferry, her purse had been stolen, along with HER PASSPORT. This was a disaster, and I chimed in with my stern older sister voice, “HOW could you be so careless as to loose sight of your passport??” Then I thought for a second and turned to my husband, “Oh, damn, where’s my passport?”

I had left it back on the island in the hotel safe.

We had no choice but to change our flights. I had to get back on the ferry and make the half-day trip to retrieve my passport. Then I stayed over in Bangkok for three extra days with my sister, as she had a new one expedited at the American Embassy.

Koh Phi Phi, Thailand, the setting for my story SURRENDER AT DAWN.

But there are so many silver linings to this story. I got to spend three amazing (unplanned) days exploring Bangkok with my baby sis. That last (unplanned) afternoon on Koh Phi Phi I swam in the ocean and saw the most beautiful coral and fish I have ever seen. The vibrant colors were straight out of a Disney movie. And the entire setting would later become the backdrop for one of my favorite short stories, SURRENDER AT DAWN. When I sat down to write this little love story, I put a postcard from Thailand on my desk and got to re-live the joy of visiting one of the most spectacular spots on earth.

So it’s a good thing the best laid travel plans, for us at least, often go awry.

Here is a glimpse of the story, which just became available for eReader.

Leave a comment about a vacation that went awry and you’ll be entered to win a $25 gift card to Amazon. Happy reading!

SURRENDER AT DAWN by Laura Griffin

Former Navy SEAL Jack Brenner knows he’s in trouble the minute Charlotte Whiteside steps into a seedy Thai bar and asks him to help rescue her brother, who is being held hostage on a nearby island. Jack doesn’t want to get tangled up in Charlotte’s problems or anyone else’s, but an obligation to a SEAL teammate prompts him to get involved. They embark on a nighttime mission that turns out to be more dangerous–and passionate–than either of them ever imagined.

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Bio:

Allison Brennan

Allison Brennan is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of nearly three dozen romantic thrillers and mysteries, including the Lucy Kincaid series and the Max Revere series. She lives in Northern California with her husband, five children, and assorted pets.